To
make the same mistake twice is failure. Where had he heard that
quote? Or read it somewhere (hed gone through so many books
lately). He wasnt sure if those were exactly the words,
but that was the gist of it, and he remembered having been struck
by them  almost like a blow  painfully.

It was the inner,
eating hurt that came from a sudden realization, a truth. It occurred
to him that he had made the same mistake not just twice,
but many more times. There had been repeated failure over the years;
he had never been able to surmount the problems in his head. He still
didnt like to look at them that way, but now he didnt bother
to deny the fact that he had difficulties getting along. If you looked
at the last twenty years of his life, it had always come down to what
he could have called spinning his wheels (another quote
from somebody, concerning him). He knew he had never been able to get
traction on anything in life, or maybe it was that he never put forth
the required effort. At times, it occurred to him that he didnt
and never would have it in him; it wasnt in his nature to apply
himself, wholeheartedly, to even one thing; he was too fickle in his
everyday choices.

With increasing age, he found he was more honest with himself, though
age and wisdom didnt necessarily provide him with
any answers as to how to get on in a more productive way. He almost
never got geared up for anything anymore, as the anticipation
of an inevitable letdown came with it. Why bother with excitement? That
was for kids. Though there were still moments when he felt like a big
kid; his exuberance surprised him, made him laugh. Where had that come
from? As if a little of that youthful spirit from the past had been
tucked away in his subconscious, a trapped pocket of refreshingly pure
air just released. He hadnt entirely given up on himself, if only
for these occasional moments. If only for the briefest of times, he
could say that he actually enjoyed life, or perhaps accepted
is the better word. He accepted the conditions of his existence, and
wanted life to continue, the term life being general enough
to suit his good feeling. He relished every one of these easy and stimulating
moments as medicine to combat the much greater and ever-growing shadow
on his days.

He couldnt remember a day when that shadow hadnt been present
at some point. Perhaps it grew as the time passed, with his knowing
that he had less of it by the day and, the feeling at the core of him,
that he would be largely ineffective in however he chose to spend it.
How could he not be a failure in the end? When he thought about his
dreams, ideas and powerful feelings  his life inside his head,
in other words  he realized how little of it ever saw life in
the external world. How little of his inspirations and desires was ever
brought to fruition outside of his inner stage? How many
captivating little dramas had played and run their course in his head,
to be replaced by new scenes (for he was never short on strong impressions)?
It seemed you went to the grave with the best and worst inside you.

His written attempts to share something of that inner world  books
worth of words - had been just a meager sampling here and there, an
attempt to seize the moment, as it were. The fact that he kept writing
meant that he was never quite satisfied that he had gotten it down right;
he was destined to come up short, no matter how inspired a start he
had. With his writing, he could accept that, convinced that his difficulties
werent any more or less than what other writers experienced; it
was all part of the creative process. Yet outside of writing, his failure
 and he could think of no other word for it  to achieve
any stability in his everyday life, any respite from the inner turmoil
it produced, clung to him in what could only be a debilitating way,
it weighed on him almost every day out of the starting blocks. And the
weight mounted, even with those temporary (and necessary) releases.

Now he was at what was considered middle age and he wondered how he
could put up with another perhaps thirty to forty years of that dreadful
build-up. He saw no signs of seeing the light or of a lessening
of his burden, and he had no reason to believe that this would occur.
He had groped along for so long now and found that the best you could
hope for at the end of a day was a laugh to relieve the tension. Illumination,
his ass. Something in his gut and a warm sleep, that was about it. Hed
made it through another one. How often, when still a kid, had he heard
older people say that, and it annoyed him somehow, as if they werent
really going all out, or had given up in some way. At that age, he didnt
want to hear that life could be seen to be that limited. There were
still all kinds of possibilities then. But now, when he caught himself
thinking the same old way at days end, he felt his
age more than at any other time. Some more troubling thoughts to sleep
on.
Mike Blake <mablake63@cox.net